


Look Who's Digging Their Own Grave

by Equalopportunityoggler



Series: Holes In Your Coffin [1]
Category: The Dresden Files (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Episode: s01e010 What about Bob?, Episode: s01e11 Things That Go Bump, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Mild Language, Not Beta Read, Pining, Unrequited Love, he knows what he did, no beta we die like men, this is all Nathan's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28963716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Equalopportunityoggler/pseuds/Equalopportunityoggler
Summary: While working on a seemingly-simple missing persons case, Harry ruminates about his less-than-platonic feelings for Bob, and get himself beat up in the bargain.This is the first part, and lead-in, to what is shaping up to be a big series project...
Relationships: Bob the Skull/Harry Dresden, Hrothbert of Bainbridge/Harry Dresden
Series: Holes In Your Coffin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124402
Kudos: 3





	Look Who's Digging Their Own Grave

**Author's Note:**

> Let's get the painfully obvious stuff out of the way:  
> 1) I have not written (let alone POSTED) a fic since 2005, so I make no claims as to quality  
> 2) I have watched all of The Dresden Files tv show multiple times and only recently started reading the books (I'm on book 7) -- this fic is VERY tv-centric but I literally started this fic because there is ONE scene in ONE of the books that I wanted to plop tv!Bob into (yet somehow over 45k words into this project and I have yet to actually get to that scene!)  
> 3) I waited to start posting anything until I was about halfway through the whole project in hopes that this will prevent me from leaving this fic to languish unfinished a year from now...  
> 4) Fic title is from "Icarus" by Bastille, series title is from "Holes In Your Coffin" by Phildel  
> 5) This fic is ALL NATHAN'S FAULT. He knows what he did.
> 
> And away we go!

**_Holes In Your Coffin, Part One:_ **

**_Look Who’s Digging Their Own Grave_ **

Harry wasn’t entirely sure when it had started. A year ago? two years ago? A decade ago? Or maybe just since he had lost Bob to a thief who had been working for Uncle Justin. Maybe it had been going on for years and he hadn’t been entirely aware of it. Either way, he was coming to the terrifying conclusion that he had less-than-platonic feelings for his erstwhile mentor, friend, and resident pain-in-the-ass, Hrothbert of Bainbridge. Bob the ghost. Fuck.

He had been thinking about it for weeks now. Five weeks to be exact. After two terrifying incidents had left him rattled and paranoid and constantly thinking about Bob’s whereabouts and safety. First had been the kidnapping by Uncle Justin, and the fact that for a few brief moments, he had really believed Bob had betrayed him on Justin’s orders. And then there had been the incident with the fucking dragon. In his apartment. And Ancient Mai dragging them into the Never-Never, where Bob had, again briefly, been lost. Disappeared. Just gone. That moment when he had held Bob's skull in his hands and called his name, only to receive no reply, no sparkling orange motes of light and dust and power bringing Bob back to him, had been one of the most breathlessly horrifying moments of his life. It had ranked right up there with his father’s death, and that was really saying something.

Ever since then Harry had been constantly worrying about Bob. Where he was. If he was safe. And realizing that he honestly didn’t think he could function without that handsome, white-haired, deep-voiced exasperating, infuriating, demanding ghost in his life. He took a deep breath and paused mid-step to consider: who was the one person whose opinion mattered to him the most, who made him feel safe even without physical contact, whose face made him smile when he returned home from a case, or woke up from the bad nightmare? Who was the most important person in his life? The answer was shockingly easy: Bob.

Harry shook his head. Now was not the time to be having this revelation, of course. He was on a job. He was in a rough part of town, wandering back alleys looking for any trace of a young man who could be dead by now for all he knew. That morning a woman had come into his office. She had been pretty in a gentle, sad sort of way. Passing fifty, wearing a somewhat worn wool coat, her long hair swept back into a no-nonsense braid and just starting to go gray at the temples and in a few vague stripes from the center part of her hair. She had clearly been distressed, he could tell even before she opened her mouth. When she did open her mouth, it was to apologize and admit she didn’t really believe in wizards and beg for his help all in one long breath.

“I need you to find my son. Please, Mr. Dresden. I am at a loss. The police can’t help. And I don’t know what else to try,” she said.

“Please have a seat, Mrs...” Harry began, trailing off to let her fill in her name.

“Burbank,” she said, as she took a reluctant seat in the worn wooden chair by his very cluttered desk.

“Mrs. Burbank,” Harry said, nodding. “Take a deep breath, and tell me what’s going on and I’ll see if I can help or not. Okay?”

The woman nodded and took a deep breath and began to speak in a low but intense rush. “My son, Casey, is missing. The police won’t help, or can’t, I suppose, because Casey is over 18 and doesn’t live at home and I have no proof he’s in danger. But I know he is. He’s 23. He lives in a squalid little apartment with two roommates and they haven’t seen him in three or four days. He has a drug problem. Has since he was sixteen. He cleans up for awhile, but he always ends up back on something. Cocaine. Ketamine. It doesn’t matter to him. I do what I can. I asked him to come home, but he refused. I send him some money when I can so at least he doesn’t starve to death. But he usually calls me every couple of days just so I know he’s alive. And he hasn’t called in a week. I’m afraid he’s overdosed in the streets somewhere. I just know that’s what’s happened. I just know it!”

Mrs. Burbank finally stopped the flood of frantic words. Harry took a deep breath and nodded. “I understand, Mrs. Burbank. You’re right that the police can’t take missing persons cases if the evidence suggests they disappeared of their own volition, and they’re not a minor.”

Mrs. Burbank took a breath to interrupt but Harry pushed ahead: “thankfully, that’s not a problem I have. Missing persons cases is a bit of a specialty of mine.”

“Really?”

“Yep! So, any information you can give me about his favorite haunts? If you know who his dealer might be… anything you can give me would be useful, really. Also, this might seem a little odd to you, but if you have something of his I can keep, that would be great too. A piece of clothing, or a lock of hair, or something similar. Something that would have been in contact with him for a decent amount of time...”

“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Burbank said, nodding in a way that suggested she had anticipated this despite her insistence that she didn’t really believe in this stuff. She dug a hand into her purse and pulled out a small folded piece of plaid cloth. For half a second, Harry feared it was a pair of boxers and coughed softly, but after a moment, she had unfolded it and revealed it to be a plaid bandanna.

“Casey used to wear this when he did work around the house for me - clean gutters, fix broken steps on the front porch... that kind of thing. It has been cleaned since the last time he used it.... but it should still work, right? Since he wore it a lot?”

“Yes, that‘ll work just fine,” Harry said, and he accepted the cloth with a reassuring smile.

“And here’s a list of some people that Casey goes to. His two roommates are on here, of course, with their phone numbers, but like I said... they haven’t seen him in awhile. I also have the names of a couple other friends, and someone who might be his dealer. Maybe. The roommates said they think it is, but they don’t know for sure.”

“This is all great information, Mrs. Burbank. Really. This will be really useful.” Harry accepted the piece of paper and placed it and the bandanna in a folder on his desk. “Now, I hope you don’t mind if I get a few business particulars out of the way...” he said. Mrs. Burbank nodded. “For missing persons cases, I charge $50 an hour, plus expenses. The expenses are usually pretty minimal, but you never know. Plus, $100 up front for retainer. Is that acceptable?” 

“yes, of course,” Mrs Burbank said, and she pulled out a checkbook. “Are checks okay? I didn’t know how much cash to withdraw and this seemed safer.”

“That’s just fine,” Harry replied, and he tried to fight a smile. Cash was always better when he could get it, but this woman didn’t seem the type to give out bad checks, so it should be fine. A check for the retainer and the first day of work was written and signed and handed over and Harry smiled reassuringly and ushered Mrs. Burbank out the door.

And now, here was Harry, standing in the middle of a dirty alley, with a crystal spelled to locate Casey Burbank going wild in his hand, while Harry kept losing focus to worry idiotically about his feelings for his mentor. And also, it was raining.

Stop being an idiot and focus, Harry told himself. He tried not to think about how much that little nagging voice in his head sounded like Bob -- deep velvet-smooth voice and elegant English accent, and all. He closed his eyes and thought about Casey Burbank, thought about the poor mother’s worry and fear, thought about what little Casey’s roommates had been able to tell him when he had called them earlier that evening, thought about the kind of person who fled from life at the bottom of a syringe, or the end of a crack pipe. He felt the location spell refocus, sharpen. Then he opened his eyes and found that the crystal had stopped spinning wildly and was now pointed firmly in a single direction. 

Into a brick wall.

That was the only major problem with location spells. They worked in straight lines, as a bird flies. They didn’t know or care about road maps or streetlights or buildings that might stand in the way. Harry glared at the crystal but it stayed resolutely pointed through a brick wall. Figure out how to get around it yourself, asshole, the crystal seemed to say to him.

Harry heaved a sigh and turned around, in search of the nearest cross-street.

*

Fifteen minutes and a half a dozen streets later, Harry was still walking and it was still raining. And the crystal was spinning again. Only this time he was one hundred percent sure it wasn’t his fault this time. The crystal pointed southwest. He’d walk southwest. A few minutes later the crystal would pause and turn the other way. So he’d turn around and walk back going northeast and after a few minutes, the crystal would start spinning again.

Ten more minutes of this went by until Harry came to a halt and closed his eyes with a sigh. Stars and Stones, Harry you are an idiot, he thought. The crystal didn’t have a sense of up or down. There was no three-dimensional aspect to the spell. It saw the world as flat as a map. He looked down at his feet.

Undertown. Of course.

The closest entrance to Undertown was a good twenty minutes walk away, and then he’d have to wind his way back to the place he had been standing above ground. Harry squared his shoulders and started walking. Thankfully, he was relatively familiar with Undertown. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Undertown were also familiar with _him_ , and they didn't particularly _like_ him. He hadn’t exactly come prepared for much either, having assumed this would be a simple enough missing persons case. He wished he had thought to bring his hockey-stick-blasting rod with him. Still, he had his shield bracelet, and his drumstick-wand, so he’d probably be alright.

Most people, even long-time Chicagoans, didn’t realize that there was a secret city right beneath their feet. Chicago had been built on marshy ground and it had been sinking for decades, centuries even. As the city sank, new streets and new buildings were simply built atop the old, until eventually an enormous underground labyrinthine city had developed beneath the asphalt and brick of the modern city. This was Undertown, a place where the lost and the criminal and otherworldly gathered in the protection of the dark. To call this population " _unsavory"_ was a huge disservice to the word. Among the less-dangerous types who ended up there out of desperation, there were the truly deadly: vampires, demons, creatures Harry didn’t even have names for. And Harry had made enemies of any number of them. Even the ones he’d never personally encountered usually knew him by reputation, which was _not_ a good thing in his case -- being the only professional wizard in the phone book, with a long history of fighting and killing the kinds of things that tended to inhabit Undertown would do that though.

Harry tried to keep one eye on his location crystal -- once again pointed in a single firm direction -- while keeping the other eye carefully on his surroundings. The last thing he wanted to do was get jumped by a demon while looking for a single drug addict. Of course, he’d probably just doomed himself by thinking such a thing. Bob would smack him upside the head for that if he were there... and could touch anything... like he had been able to, briefly, when Justin’s doppelgänger had made him mortal again for a few fleeting hours. Of course, Harry had been a little too terrified by the prospect of Bob betraying him, and Uncle Justin being suddenly alive again, to really appreciate it at the time, but for days and weeks after it was all over, Harry had replayed that moment over and over again in his head. When Bob had appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him roughly by the lapels. For one tiny fraction of a second, Harry’s libido had kicked in so thoroughly that he’d forgotten to be afraid. Of course, it quickly faded with the realization that Bob was (ostensibly) working for Justin to kill Harry -- again. But when the danger had ended, the delicious physicality of that moment had seared itself into Harry’s dreams and daydreams almost to the exclusion of all else. Except for the nightmares that had _also_ featured Bob alive, but this time really and truly working for Justin again, betraying Harry, killing him, abandoning him.

Harry’s feet ground to a halt. He’d completely lost focus again, and the crystal was spinning in rapid circles while glowing reproachfully at him as if to say “hey asshole, pay attention to what you’re doing for once, would ya?”

“Keep it together, Harry,” he muttered to himself, as he tried to draw the power of the location spell back to himself and banish Bob from his thoughts. This was getting ridiculous.

Then, just to prove how ridiculous it was, something chose that moment to leap out of the shadows and tackle him.

With a loud grunt, both Harry and the whatever-it-was toppled to the ground in the dark and Harry lost hold of his little glowing, spinning crystal.

“Stars and Stones!” Harry gasped.

In the dark of Undertown, Harry couldn’t quite be sure what had attacked him, but knowing wouldn’t have mattered much in that instant. He kicked at the thing -- it was at least human-shaped but its hands were tipped with cat-like claws rather than human fingernails -- and swung wildly to punch in the general direction of where he thought the face might be. The creature fell away just long enough for Harry to mostly scramble to his feet before it lunged again, claws swiping at his face. He could feel four long gashes split open from the bridge of his nose and down his cheek and gave a wordless scream of pain as he stumbled backwards against the wall of the tunnel. 

Just on the edge of panicking, Harry dug into his long coat for his drumstick-wand and quickly produced a light at its tip that he then flung up into the air to hover above him and the thing attacking him. It was, if Harry was being honest, what he imagined a performer from the Broadway show _Cats_ might look like if the makeup people had been going for more realism, and it had been performed in hell. Humanoid in shape, but covered in short fine black fur, with a cat-like nose and huge round yellow eyes clearly meant for seeing in the dark. And of course, claws and teeth to match.

“What the hell are you?” Harry said, more to himself than anything, since he didn’t really expect the creature to respond.

But respond it did. “I’m the one who is going to kill the infamous Harry Dresden, enemy of the creatures who walk the night. I will be legendary!”

The creature’s voice was a low, hissing sound and its little proclamation was so cliche that Harry couldn’t help the snort that escaped him.

“Yeah, ok...” he said dryly, trying not to outright laugh. “Tell me how that works out for you.”

The creature yowled in fury at the clear derision in Harry’s voice, and leapt at him again. Harry held his wand up between them but that didn’t stop the cat-like claws from stabbing him in the neck and collarbone where his leather coat didn’t protect him.

“Ventas servitas!” Harry shouted, and a gust of wind threw the Cat Creature from Broadway Hell off of Harry and several yards down the tunnel. That gave Harry enough time to reach for his pistol with the hand not holding the wand and level it neatly at his attacker.

“Move again and I shoot,” he warned.

The creature leapt to its feet and dashed toward him. Harry shot. The bullet hit what he assumed was the creature’s knee-cap -- did cats have kneecaps? -- and the creature crumpled to the ground with an anguished howl. 

“Stay down, or the next shot won’t be so friendly,” he said.

The cat creature seemed to consider its options for a moment, staring up at Harry with furious, hate-filled golden eyes. Then it pulled its legs up to its chest, whined in pain, and didn’t move again.

“Good boy,” Harry said. “Or girl... whatever...” 

With one eye still on the injured whining creature, he searched for his lost location crystal, thankfully still faintly glowing in the dark, though it had stopped spinning. He slid his wand back into its pocket on the inside of his coat, keeping his pistol out and trained on the cat-thing, then plucked the crystal up from the floor and walked away.

For a minute or two, he just walked, continuing in the direction he had been going before he had been tackled by the Cat Creature from Broadway Hell. When it was clear that the thing did not intend to follow him and try its luck again, he paused to re-situated himself and get the location crystal going again. He knew he was bleeding from the long thin gashes in his face and the small needle-thin stab wounds in his neck and collarbone, and he was rumpled and covered in dirt and sweat and, frankly, pissed off. But he didn’t want to take the time to worry about that right now. He wanted to find the person he had come here for and get the hell out before someone or something else decided to attack him. Besides which, the adrenaline was keeping him moving right now and he might as well make the most of it.

The adrenaline had had the added benefit of clearing his mind of certain distractions. So now that he poured his attention back into the location spell, it spun once or twice and then swung resolutely into a single position and stayed there. With a sharp nod, Harry headed forward again.

For another twenty or thirty minutes he walked, following several twists and turns in the tunnels of Undertown. He could hear other people or creatures somewhere out in the darkness around him, but no one emerged to hassle him this time. Still, he was getting tired. Not to mention annoyed. Finally, _finally_ , the faint glow of the crystal intensified into a blinking flash and thrummed gently at the end of its string. Apparently he had arrived.

Harry peered into the darkness around him, looking in crevices and behind corners. At first, he could find no one. Then, he realized that a soft rattling he heard was not noise from the road above his head or from whatever creatures lay on the edges of his vision, but was in fact the quiet rattling breath of a young man in acute distress.

The phrase “acute distress” was something he had once heard an EMT say. For some reason it was the first phrase that came to mind when he finally caught sight of Casey Burbank. The young man was curled into a tight ball, hidden in the deep shadows of a particularly deep crevice in the walls. His clothes were grimy and rumpled and frayed. His skin, from what Harry could tell in the dim light of his crystal, was clammy and gray. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and his breathing was labored and horrifying. The air rattled in his lungs like small pebbles in a can made of bone. Hollow. Excruciating.

Carefully, Harry stepped over to him and knelt down. “Mr. Burbank?”

Casey Burbank did not respond, did not seem to hear him. A low murmuring escaped his lips, but he was not talking to Harry. “The dark... dark... dark is coming... dark...” the young man said.

“Mr. Burbank?” Harry tried again, “Casey?”

Casey’s eyes fluttered open and his head turned towards Harry’s voice, but the eyes were milky white with no iris or pupil visible, and stared out at nothing in particular.

“Stars and Stones...” Harry muttered.

“The dark... dark...”

Casey shook his head violently as if to clear it. Then murmured more. “So bright... it was so bright bright bright brightbrightbright ... but it's gone now... the dark.... dark dark darkdarkdark.... dark is coming....”

“Casey,” Harry said, “if you can hear me... if you can understand me... Your mother sent me to look for you. I’m going to get you out of here. Get you to a hospital.” He reached out and gently laid a hand on the man’s bare shivering arm. The arm was covered in track marks, and burn marks, and claw marks, and the gods alone knew what else. When Harry’s fingers made contact, the young man screamed. No, he didn’t just scream, he _howled_.

In a flash, Harry yanked his hand away, heart hammering in his throat, and the young man stopped screaming.

Then Casey turned his sightless eyes to Harry again and said, in a slightly clearer tone: “I see you... see you... you’re on fire...”

Harry blinked.

“No,” Casey added, “you ARE fire. You will burn!” Casey suddenly surged forward and grasped Harry’s shoulders with both hands. “Burnburnburn! You will burn! And everyone around you will burn too! Burn to ash! Ash! Ashashashash!” Casey wailed and foam dripped from his mouth and Harry stared at him, eyes wide, mouth gaping open.

What the hell was this man tripping on? He’d never seen a reaction like this before. He’d seen coke heads and ketamine addicts and LSD trips that would give Timothy Leary pause. But whatever this was, he’d never seen anything like it before.

“Okay, man,'' Harry said, trying to be soothing, but bordering on completely freaked out. “It’s okay. Let’s just get you out of here...” 

With prodigious effort, he grappled the man and hauled him to his feet. Casey swayed and stumbled, his eyes fluttering open and closed. Harry gripped him by his forearms and waited for a moment to see if he would be able to steady himself. He still wasn’t sure if the man could see out of those milky white eyes or not.

“No no no no no,” Casey muttered, no longer shouting. “Worms in my head... worms in my bones... it’s all gone, it’s all gone, it’s all gone... it’ll never come again...”

“What’s never coming again, buddy?” Harry asked gently as he tried to manhandle the man back the way he had come. The man didn’t seem to really notice that Harry was guiding him, practically frog-marching him down the tunnel.

“No light.... no light ever again...” Casey said. Was that an answer to Harry’s question? Frankly, he had no clue. “There was lightning in my blood...” Casey added. “Never again...”

“Lightning, right.” Harry sighed. He was not getting paid enough for this shit. “Come on, buddy...” He dragged the man down the tunnel. The muscles in his hands and arms and back strained under the effort to keep the man standing and moving. But Harry’s eyes stayed trained forward, peering into the darkness ahead of them, daring anything to fuck with him right this minute.

It took them almost an hour to reach the entrance to Undertown that Harry had used.

Amazingly, nothing came near them in all that time.

Either Harry’s glare was getting better, or the monsters in the dark were just as freaked out by Casey’s raving and blank sightless eyes as he was. Or maybe they just knew something he didn’t.

*

To call the task of getting Casey out of Undertown, back to Harry’s beat up old Jeep, _into_ said Jeep, and driven to the nearest hospital “ _difficult_ ” would be the understatement of the year. Possibly the decade. But somehow Harry did it. Explaining to the nurses at the ER what was going on wasn’t a cakewalk either, for that matter.

“He’s overdosed on _something_ ,” Harry insisted. “I have no idea _what_ exactly. I just found him like this, I _swear_.”

The ER nurses had been skeptical, to put it lightly. Harry suspected the nurses thought that _he_ had done something... somehow. It didn’t help that he was sliced up and covered in blood. “I’m fine!” He insisted as they poked and prodded him. “Take care of Mr. Burbank, please. I’m fine!”

After the nurses had wheeled Casey Burbank away on a cart, and when they had finally given up trying to drag _him_ into the nearest room as well, Harry went in search of the nearest pay-phone.

The first person he called was, of course, Mrs. Burbank. It was a quick call. He kept the details of where he had found Casey as vague as possible. Just told her which hospital he had been brought to, and what shape he had been in. From the clanking sound the phone had made, Harry suspected Mrs. Burbank had dropped the phone to the floor without hanging up before dashing out to meet them.

The second person he called was, of course, Murphy. He had a few reasons for doing this. First of all, any time anything weird and vaguely illegal happened in Chicago, Murphy always managed to be involved somehow or another. Second, Harry had a feeling he was going to need backup to deal with whatever Casey had gotten himself into. Third, the nurses clearly thought he’d had something to do with Casey’s current state and better to get Murphy involved _now_ while he could explain rather than let her get called in later and accuse him of trying to hide something.

Murphy sighed heavily when he gave her the barest bones of what he had been up to that day. “What have you gotten yourself into now, Dresden?” She muttered. And then added: “the probability of illegal drug use aside, this hardly sounds like a police matter.” But she had agreed to come anyway. Just in case. Harry tried not to let on exactly how grateful he is.

Despite the fact that Harry had been the one to bring him in, the nurses and doctors would not let Harry see Casey because he wasn’t family. So he sat in the waiting room -- still covered in blood, he might add, though his wounds had finally stopped freely bleeding and were beginning to dry and get sticky. Mrs. Burbank appeared within fifteen minutes, flying in with a flutter of long jackets and loose hair and wild eyes like an attacking eagle. 

“Where is he?” She demanded without preamble. Harry shrugged and pointed to the nurse’s station. They wouldn’t tell him anything, after all. Mrs. Burbank flew to the nurse’s station and no more than thirty seconds later she was being led down a hallway, Harry dragged in her wake with a “Mr. Dresden, I insist you join me!”

In the short time that Casey Burbank had been in the care of the nurses and doctors, he had been changed into a hospital gown, hooked up to myriad machines and IV drips, and his face and arms (if not the rest of him) had been cleaned. Harry was oddly grateful for that last most of all; Mrs. Burbank had not needed to see her son as grimy and bloody and mud-splattered as he had been when Harry found him. Still, Casey Burbank looked horrendous. On death’s door. Pale and drawn, with that grayish tinge and sweaty sheen that tended to accompany the very ill. He had only been missing a few days, a week at most, but he looked starved and wasted away in a way that usually came with weeks or months or years of homelessness. He was hooked up to so many IVs and monitoring machines that Harry couldn’t begin to guess what specifically might be wrong with him. Besides, of course, the bad trip of a lifetime, apparently.

Harry had been examining Casey so intensely that it took him a minute or two to realize that the attending doctor had come in and was speaking with Mrs. Burbank, and to some extent, him as well.

“...some kind of drug overdose, clearly,” the doctor was saying, “but we can’t seem to determine what kind. He is severely dehydrated. He is in hyperthermia. His heart rate is rapid and erratic and his blood pressure is distressingly high - we’re working on getting that back down. He came in presenting with delirium and hallucinations. He was fighting with the nurses and we finally had to sedate him about ten minutes ago. Hopefully that will give us the time needed to get his blood pressure and body temperature back down to acceptable levels and possibly determine exactly which drug he has overdosed on.”

“Do you have any idea how he came to be in this condition?” The doctor asked finally, glancing meaningfully between Mrs. Burbank and Harry. Harry bristled at the look, despite the fact that he had been expecting something like it.

“Hey, I’m just the guy who found him and brought to the hospital for treatment,” Harry said, holding his hands up in the ever-classic ‘don’t look at me, I’m innocent’ gesture.

Right at that moment, Murphy came striding through the door, politely thanking the nurse who had led her there as she stepped in. “Hello, Dresden,” she said, her tone caught somewhere between amused and exasperated. “What did you get yourself into this time?”

“Nothing, Murph! I swear!” Harry insisted, now glancing nervously between Murphy and the doctor.

The doctor and Mrs. Burbank asked at the same time: “I’m sorry, who are you?” And “Who is this?”

“Lieutenant Connie Murphy,” Murphy said, with a quick flash of her badge. “Don’t worry, I’m not here in any kind of official capacity. I’m just a friend of this idiot here. Came to make sure he was okay.”

“Hey!” Harry exclaimed. “I take exception to that!” 

“Which part?” Murphy asked. 

“I... I’ll let you know.”

Murphy smirked.

“Now, as I was asking: what did you get yourself into this time?”

At that, Mrs. Burbank spoke up. “It’s honestly nothing, Lieutenant. I hired Mr. Dresden to find my son. He’d been missing for several days, possibly a week, according to his roommates, but the police said they couldn’t help. I feared he might be back on drugs again, and I’m afraid based on his current condition, I was correct.”

Murphy nodded. The doctor nodded. Harry nodded with a gesture that said ‘see! I didn’t do anything I wasn’t supposed to!’

“Alrighty then,” Murphy said. “In that case.... when he wakes up, if he’d be willing to make a statement and tell us who his dealer is, so we can get them off the street, that would be great. Otherwise, I don’t think you’ll be needing my services. Dresden and I will get out of your hair...”

Murphy turned to leave. Harry nodded to Mrs. Burbank and made to follow her when suddenly Casey flew up into a sitting position in his bed, despite the doctor’s claim that he had been heavily sedated.

Casey pointed at Harry and stared with those wide sightless white eyes. And then he screamed: “Fire! Fire and death! You are death! Death death deathdeathdeath! Everything near you will burn and die! Die die DIE DIE DIE!”

By this point, the doctor and two orderlies were wrestling Casey back down onto the bed and shoving a needle into his arm to sedate him again.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Burbank,” the doctor was shouting over the noise, trying to reassure Casey’s poor mother, who looked shaken and distressed, her hands covering her mouth and tears shining in her eyes. “It’s a bad reaction, but he’s going to be okay,” the doctor insisted.

The doctor seemed to think Casey’s violent outbursts were simply a bad reaction to whatever drug was in his system. But Harry stared at the young man in wordless horror. Casey was pointing at _him_ , staring at _him_ , he was saying these things only to _him_.

Murphy glanced up at Harry and concern flitted across her face. Harry couldn’t imagine what his face looked like in that moment, but he felt stricken, attacked. What was this young man seeing in him? What did he know that Harry didn’t?

“Dresden,” Murphy called, trying to lead him out of the room. Harry stood glued to the spot, staring at Casey Burbank as he struggled against the sedation. “Come on Harry,” Murphy said more gently, and placed a hand on his arm.

The touch startled him into motion, and with a blink and a shake of his head he followed Murphy out of the room. They walked in silence down the hallway, around a corner, and back into the main waiting area off the Emergency Room. Then they stopped. Murphy looked at Harry and judging from the expression of worry on her face, he imagined he must look pretty upset, or shaken, or something.

He shrugged and shook his head again, and said, “I’m fine, Murph. Just tired.”

She didn’t buy it for a second. “You took that man’s raving more seriously than the doctor did,” she observed. Sometimes he really hated how observant she was. “What do you think he meant?” 

Harry sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know, Murph.”

“Dresden...”

“I really don’t know. It just... felt personal, you know? Like he can see something I can’t... But I really don’t know. I’m probably just being paranoid. The doctor’s right. It’s just the random drug-addled ravings of an OD’ing addict.”

Murphy still looked skeptical, but nodded. 

“And I need some sleep,” Harry added. “But thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure if it was something that would need your presence or not.”

“No problem,” Murphy said, giving him a small smile. “Now go home and get some rest. You look like shit.”

“Gee, thanks Murph!” With a sarcastic salute in her direction, he strode out of the hospital, and headed home.

*

By the time Harry hobbled into his loft he was perhaps a bit more worse for the wear than was reasonable for a single day’s work. He was sore and stiff and bruised, his face and neck and chest were tacky with barely-dried blood, he was exhausted, and he was -- he was willing to admit to himself if not anyone else -- more than a little disturbed by his encounter with Casey Burbank, both the haunting look of the man and the insane, delirious, somehow _real_ words he had spoken about Harry. _To_ Harry.

He opened the door, stumbled through the threshold -- now far more guarded and powerful than they had been pre-Bob’s abduction -- slammed the door shut, and slid down to the floor, slumped against it. He felt Bob’s approach even before he saw the orange-gold motes of dust and light and magic come floating toward him, and resolve themselves into Bob’s achingly familiar form.

“Harry!” Bob gasped, not loudly but with that burst of breathy weight as of someone being gut-punched and exhaling sharply. It was interesting to hear the sound from a man, a being, that did not in fact have a gut to punch, or lungs to breathe from.

“Hi Bob...” he replied wearily.

“I thought this was a simple missing persons case,” Bob demanded. Harry had the distinct impression that Bob was reining in his temper, keeping his voice rigidly calm after that initial breathless exclamation. Perhaps Bob was resisting the urge to lecture him again, tell him off for being reckless or stupid or both. Harry sighed and heaved himself to his feet.

“Yeah well... not so simple, as it turns out. But the missing person is no longer missing and I have been paid, so it’s all good.”

“It is not ‘ _all good_ ’ as you say!” Bob said sternly. “You look ghastly. You need a bath at the very least. Probably stitches as well, to be honest. What happened exactly?”

“My missing person was in Undertown. Had to go fetch him. Got attacked by a... something... on the way. Took care of it.” Harry felt the words becoming more and more staccato as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom and a shower. He felt Bob following, hovering behind him as if Harry might any moment topple down the stairs. As if Bob could do anything about it if he did...

“And you fought back with your face?” Bob asked, half-snark, half-demand.

“Absolutely. Definitely. Thought a charm offensive might work. Calculated risk.”

“Whose calculations? A toddler’s?”

Harry sighed again. He couldn’t tell if Bob was trying to hide real concern behind his bloody-minded snark, or if he really thought Harry was that dumb. Well, he had been known to insult Harry’s intelligence on occasion... the memory of Bob’s voice in that moment of terror, whispering _‘honestly, it’s been hell...’_

He shook his head to clear it. It had all been part of the charade to convince Justin that Bob was loyal, so that he could learn Justin’s full plan. It was fine. It was _all fine_.

Still... “Leave me alone, Bob,” Harry muttered, and he hobbled into the bathroom for a shower and to tend his wounds.

If Bob was at all concerned by the time Harry had emerged from the bathroom, clean and damp, with ointment and bandages on his neck and shoulders and cheek, he did an admirable job of concealing it. Harry found him in the workroom, drawing light sigils in the air again, working out some mystical calculation or another. As always. His skull was on the table. Harry had given it a good cleaning after the incident with the dragon and the Never-Never. He had felt the odd need to clean out the eye sockets and dust the skull so that the myriad carved on it showed in sharp relief. As if that would assure Harry that it was still there, that _Bob_ was still there, safe.

Now the skull was perfectly safe, sitting on a stack of books on his work table. But...

_Fire and death! You are death! Death death deathdeathdeath! Everything near you will burn and die! Die die DIE DIE DIE!_

“Have a good shower?” Bob asked as if making polite small talk with a stranger. Then continued, “have a look at this invocation, if you—” 

Harry reached out to grab the skull.

“What-? Harry?” Bob said as Harry tucked the skull against his chest, cradled in one arm, like a stuffed animal or a security blanket. Wordlessly, Harry turned and walked out of the workroom, and up the stairs again to his bed.

“Harry?” Bob echoed, following the wizard and his skull.

“I’m tired,” Harry finally said. He crawled into his wide bed, empty of any visitors since the disaster with Tara five weeks ago. Still holding Bob’s skull to his chest, he curled on his side, sighed, and fell asleep.


End file.
